In a London classroom, a group of teenage boys have just written down a list of words they associate with women. Two men are about to read their lists back to them. Cue smirks and giggles.

But the laughs die down as they get stuck into the exercise, and soon the group are energetically debating issues to do with gender equality, tackling subjects such as violence, emotions, sex, money and homosexuality, and the way the participants interact with girls.

We're in a three-hour workshop, part of the Great Initiative's Great Men project, set up to challenge traditional masculine stereotypes and engage men and boys on gender issues.

The scheme, which is relevant as part of the PSHE or Citizenship curriculum, works with teenage boys in groups of around 20 and aims to provide a space in which they can develop opinions, engage in lively debate, have their values challenged and sometimes face some serious home truths.

The opening exercise, in which the group share the words they associate with women, is a good ice-breaker. “We get all the sex references and the rude words, including the C-word,” 22-year-old Guy MacInnes-Manby, a law conversion course student and one of the Great Men facilitators, tells me over a coffee.

“We make it clear they can say anything. When you're a 14-year-old, there are plenty of things you're not allowed to say, and being allowed to say them immediately makes the boys more comfortable. It takes away the classroom environment, I guess.”

The facilitator role is not for the fainthearted; facing down a crowd of teenage lads before talking to them about intimate issues ranging from porn to relationships, consent, sex and male suicide, takes guts.

“I was terrified at first,” admits Guy. “I remember just thinking 'Oh God, teenage boys, this could be so awful.'”

Guy is part of a team of 50 facilitators currently running workshops around London (with the aim of rolling out the project further afield). A look at the facilitators' profiles on the Great Men website reveals an interesting fact: they are all men. Gender equality is seen by many as a women's issue, but Great Men works specifically with male volunteers, to get away from the hackneyed idea of angry females battled for women's rights.

They also help reinforce the idea that young men have a crucial role to play on gender issues. There is at last a growing movement which argues that by including boys and men in discussions about sex, relationships, violence and equality, they will be made to feel like they're part of the solution rather than the problem, which will help expedite change.

I meet Folarin Akinmade, 23, another Great Men volunteer, in a cafe in Brixton. He bounds in, an energetic law graduate now studying advertising. In his snappy jacket and trendy hat, he's about as far from the jaded stereotype of a crusty feminist as you can get.

“It's not even as complicated as feminism or sexism,” he says blithely. “Feminism is just about being a decent human being. It's so much more simple than people make it.”

Both Guy and Folarin were influenced by female friends at university, their feminist values taking shape from there. Folarin admits that Laura Bates' now infamous Everyday Sexism blog brought him to tears, and he's adamant that gender equality isn't a problem for one sex to tackle on its own.

Folarin Akinmade: 'Feminism is just about being a decent human being'

“It's a social issue,” he says, explaining that boys are also adversely affected by strict demands on their gender roles. “Boys aren't often allowed to have these conversations – they're not always sexist themselves, it's just very easy to go along with what other people are doing and not question things.

“It's not about telling them what to think, it's about creating a space in which they're allowed to have these conversations for the first time.”

From online porn to sexualised violence in TV programmes like Game of Thrones and misogynistic web forums, teenagers are met with a barrage of confusing information to process. Folarin admits that the current teenage generation faces some potentially destructive gender-related challenges, a lot of it never more than a mouse-click away.

“Sometimes they just have a very skewed understanding of relationships and women, it probably affects their understanding of sex, but what's worse is their understanding of relationships and love,” he says.

“I've had sessions where boys are asking me how to behave in a relationship; how, as a man, you're supposed to treat a woman.”

There will some traditionalists who would argue that these anxieties are just part of growing up, but Guy agrees that being a young male today can be a bewildering and sometimes depressing experience.

“One of the major things we talk to the boys about is the media, and representations of men and women in magazines and newspapers,” he says.

“We provide newspaper samples and magazines just off the shelf and ask them to cut out pictures, one pile that represents men and one that represents women, the difference is really striking and quite clear. The men are all quite aspirational, with cars, in suits; and the women are more sexualised, more exposed.”

Using incredibly simple exercises, the boys are asked to consider the facts of the world around them, and debate whether they like what they uncover. Sometimes it's alarmingly basic stuff that they've never given thought to before.

Guy tells me that in one class, the boys had very little grasp on the concept of sexual consent.

“They obviously didn't think you went up to a women and had sex with her, but some of them didn't really know what consent meant,” he says.

“When you explained it to them, they'd say 'that makes a lot of sense, it feels fair to everyone, everyone has a say.' When you feel like you've breached quite a tricky subject and just made them more aware, that's really nice.”

While how to relate to the opposite sex forms an important part of each workshop, a significant part of the Great Men project is about tackling negative masculine stereotypes and examining how the boys interact with each other. They are encouraged to discuss their emotions, and ideas such as whether or not it's OK for a man to cry.

The boys are often shocked by statistics around male suicide – 2012 figures showed the UK suicide rate in men to be 3.5 times higher than in women.

“It's often attributed to the fact that men are not 'allowed' to deal with their emotions,” says Folarin.

“We want to challenge that assumption that if there's something on their mind, they're not allowed to share it. I remember being young and there are definitely things you feel embarrassed to talk about with your parents or teachers. The unfortunate thing is then you can learn very wrong things from friends and people who don't know but think they do.”

Both Guy and Folarin are encouraged by the reactions of the boys at the end of their workshops. Folarin says it's not uncommon for the youngsters to come away musing on some of the things they've learnt, and vowing to be bolder in approaching their peers to offer support if they think they're going through a rough patch.

However, they both agree that our society is a long way off true equality.

“One of the biggest challenges from my perspective is there's this disparity between what people perceive and what the reality is,” says Guy. “A lot of men will say 'what is there really left for feminists to do? A lot of evidence suggests that we're a lot further along than we used to be – you can hold up the suffragettes and say 'Well, it's better than that'. One of the biggest challenges is to say, 'We're not there yet.'”